magic: the gathering

We are getting towards the end now, two more years to go in this decade worth of gaming. I am finding it as I get more into “recent” history I am having way more trouble narrowing things down to a handful of games. For 2017, 2018 and 2019 I wound up with massive lists, I think in part because everything is still very fresh in my memory. Looking back at 2010 for example you can easily tell which games have stood the test of time. I’ve been playing Witcher 3 this holiday break and I more or less still consider it to be a current game even though it released over four years ago. Lets dig into what turned out to be another really solid year or games. Once again the disclaimer that this is the list of games that were personally important to me and not some sort of objective “best games” list.

God of War

I was a little late to getting around to playing “Dad of War” but this is largely because I have not been the biggest fan of the series for awhile. I loved the original when it came out on the PS2, but each sequel for some reason felt watered down from what worked in the first one. The “newness” had warn off and each derivative sequel failed to show me something new and interesting, which is a weird statement for me considering how much I like dusting off characters I have visited before and taking them on one more ride. What God of War gives me is a reason to care about Kratos. IN the past he was simply murder incarnate which was fun for awhile, but eventually once the carnage passed you were left with minimal story to cling to. This game presents an interesting tale of aging and fatherhood that brings something new to the series and also presents it in a much modern nature.

Far Cry 5

I played the original Far Cry game, not because it was some sort of a story masterpiece but because it presented an extremely high tech shooter with interesting AI. As the sequels released I failed to hop on that band wagon and returned with the 3rd installment and bounced pretty hard during some of the force stealth elements. So Far Cry 5 is the game that managed to rope me into the series once again by presenting an interesting narrative about a religious cult in Montana and the fight of the locals to free themselves from their yoke. I like games like this, where you have an overarching story but a bajillion mini adventures to lose yourself in, and I found the narrative told through the side content to be way more compelling than the main story. The game has its problems, but I enjoyed my time spent with it.

Return of the Obra Dinn

I don’t post screenshots of this game other than the title screen, because effectively everything about it is a potential spoiler. The style of the game is similar to those of the early Macintosh games and it is effectively a visual puzzle game with the interface of an FPS shooter. You are an insurance inspector come to examine the Obra Dinn a ship previously declared lost at sea that happened to drift into port five years too late. You use a compass like device that allows you to jump into moments in time and explore them for clues to ultimately determine the fate of all 51 of the passengers. This game was like reading a great book and from the moment I started it I could not stop until I had solved all of it. Each step gave me more tidbits of the dark and interesting story of this fateful ship and its crew.

Dragalia Lost

This is the second mobile game that I have really imprinted upon, and I am not sure if I can explain fully why it is so compelling. It walks this thin line between abusive micro transactions and giving you lots of free stuff. It feels as though you earn the alternate currency fast enough that you can keep doing gacha summons on a regular basis to keep infusing the game with new things for you to play with. The game also has the best release cadence that I have seen, and I am hoping that more games adopt something similar. There is always an event going on, or an event has just concluded and the next one starts within a few days. These events offer enough of a tweak to the core game play and enough new items and characters to chase to keep you engaged in the grind. Only recently have I stopped playing through at least the daily missions every night, as Diablo 3 on Switch has occupied the same before bedtime gameplay. Excellent game, but I think probably the worst part of it is the fact it is on a touch screen device. I would love to see it on something like the Nintendo Switch.

Magic the Gathering: Arena

I’ve loved Magic the Gathering since I first got my first starter deck back in 1994. I played the game heavily for years and then have dipped my toes in off and on since that point. As various companies explored presenting Magic in an online format I tried to get into those as well. The closest for me was Hearthstone and for years all I really wanted was for Wizards of the Coast to stop fearing the internet and presenting an online game-play experience similar to that. In 2018 they did exactly that and it officially killed off any interest I had in the competitors. I don’t play Arena nearly as often now as I did those first several months, but it is still a deeply enjoying experience that lets me get in and play some Magic whenever I feel like doing so. Also find it super useful for testing out deck ideas since it seems to be way easier to accumulate the pieces on Arena since I Have so many proxy tokens.

Monster Hunter World

For years I had heard great things about the Monster Hunter franchise but found the game as a whole to be extremely obtuse and difficult to get into. You more or less had to already be indoctrinated into the game in order to really grok each subsequent release, either that or have one of your friends willing to sherpa you through the experience. What world does is presents the game in easy to understand bites and with far greater visual fidelity than any of the mobile devices could muster. I played the hell out of this game and it really became an object of obsession when it released later on the PC. I am disappointed that Capcom is seemingly determined to keep the two games separate from each other, but I fully expect in January to dive in head first when the PC version gets the Iceborne expansion.